Everything You Need to Know About Restaurant Design & Development

A restaurant’s website should always be an adorable extension of the physical dining outlet. It should reflect the brand and the customer service offered, provide essential details like its location, and the items on the menu, and allow users to order online or make table reservations. One can get all these facilities even by using a free restaurant website builder can get all these facilities. 

A restaurant website design determines whether a customer makes a booking or bounces right off the website

Restaurateurs must always take a glance at website examples to get inspired before they start exploring website creation tools or templates. By looking at the websites of others, one can get an idea about their homepage design, online menu, color scheme used, online ordering system, and other such functionalities. While surfing through websites, one must take notes to get an understanding of what they like or dislike; what will work for them and otherwise. 

The second step is to pick the software for the restaurant website creation. During the selection process, take a look at their unique features, pre-designed available templates, extensions offered, and cost involved. 

The website builder must also offer the below functionalities:

• Menu builder or add-on
• Restaurant-specific templates that are responsive and gadget compatible
• Built-in online reservation system or extension
• Built-in online ordering system or extension
• Secure gateway for digital payments
• Ecommerce store builder or extension

These features will ensure customization of the restaurant website design without any coding knowledge. Restaurantify, for example, offers pre-designed restaurant-specific templates, menu builders, online ordering, and payment options – all for free.

A pre-designed restaurant theme or template can help create a great design instantly without any need to write codes from scratch. The template will also have layouts and elements specifically meant for restaurant websites. 

Only a restaurant owner knows his business best. So, he must carefully consider the best theme or template that is ideal to represent the brand and is appealing to customers as well. 

Restaurant owners may look for the following features in a theme or template:

• CTAs for table reservations and online ordering on every page
• Text-based, customized menus
• Forms for any business inquiries
• Website footer for location and contact information
• Image and video backgrounds

Choosing from a wide array of themes or templates makes a restaurateur's job easy. Yet, it is essential to customize the template to avoid the risk of looking exactly like some other restaurant website. 

One can customize a pre-designed restaurant template in the following ways:

• Add restaurant logo
• Change the color palette and fonts to suit your brand
• Replace stock images with those of your restaurant, dishes, and customers
• Upload the menu
• Add social media icons and personalized forms
• Customize navigation menus
• Change the color, size, and typeface of the buttons

Since a restaurant menu is the first thing that people are looking for online, it gains significant prominence in the process of website design. The menu should be broken down into various sections like appetizers, entrees, main courses, desserts, etc. 

Prices for every menu item must be displayed along with an appealing description and allergy-related information. The menu page should also have the same color palette as the other pages of the website. Depending on the website builder used and the theme, you might be able to add the menu either as an individual menu page, require a restaurant menu plugin, or embed the menu as a PDF. 

40% of consumers prefer using a restaurant’s own branded website or app for ordering food. This implies how impactful an online ordering system on the restaurant website can be. 

In 2020, only 29% of consumers ordered takeout or delivery from restaurants once a week. In 2021, it rose tremendously to 61%

Based on the CMS or website builder, the restaurant owner may be required to install an extension or set up an integration with an online ordering system in an alternative way.

 With people spending more time on mobile devices and using them for a major part of their transactions, it is essential for a restaurant to have a website that is mobile-friendly. Since many existing and prospective customers view a restaurant website on their mobile and prefer placing orders using it, having a mobile-compatible website is necessary.  

It is also essential to have a mobile app to encourage more digital orders. 

Out of 4.3 million restaurant orders during the past 18 months, nearly 60% of orders were placed using a mobile app

• Streamlined usage of fonts, colors, and imagery makes it easy to find information
• Keeping the website load speed high so that diners are not kept waiting
• Providing key information in a quick and easy manner 
• Access to all information with minimal clicks or steps
• Information on the website must always be up to date
• Ensuring that the site is SEO friendly to help customers reach your site and pages relevant to what they are looking for
• Deciding whether the website will be one page or have multiple pages

The website of this Indian cuisine restaurant located in Monroe, New Jersey is simple, yet impactful. With alluring images on the landing page that change in a slider movement, it adds a visual impact to the website’s homepage, also providing lots of information about the food, the restaurant interiors, the USP of the restaurant, etc. 

Links to other important information like online orders, menus, catering, etc. are provided in the top right corner. These links stay put in a highlighted column even as you scroll down the page. Such minimalistic, yet powerful design enables restaurateurs to achieve their goal of increased profits and greater brand recognition.

The website of this frozen yogurt outlet in Plainsboro, New Jersey has a design that is filled with images of delicious froyo and lots of information about it. A website design for outlets serving desserts or frozen yogurt needs to be colorful and visually appealing so that people start making online orders almost instantly. This template design allows Redberry to make use of several images of the nutritious dessert and also provides a lot of details about the specialties of Redberry frozen yogurt, its health benefits, allergen details, etc.

The website design of Panini Bay, a waterfront restaurant serving Italian cuisine in Tuckerton, New Jersey is simple and straightforward. The white color palette used for the restaurant instantly appeals to the eyes with large-size images of the restaurant’s Italian food making the visitor drool. Images of the restaurant’s interiors persuade online visitors to book a dine-in so that they can enjoy authentic Italian by watching the beauty of the bay. 

A diner’s experience of the restaurant starts with a website. To create the perfect first impression, a website must help them find what they are specifically looking for. To create amazing websites that attract customers, retain existing ones, improve online food orders and increase revenue, get in touch with Restaurantify.